Let's Crowdsource An Article About Steemit For The IE Website

I work as a writer for the Interesting Engineering website and I'm looking for your stories about Steemit

I'm a writer for the Interesting Engineering website, which has 6.5 million facebook followers. You can see all my articles here if you want to verify my identity: http://interestingengineering.com/author/leah-stella/

I'm actively researching Steemit in order to write an article about this community (and thereby bring more people here). After being here for just 2 days, I'm extremely excited. I feel like I've gotten out of the Matrix or something. I've dreamed of a place like this.

Anyway, it would be really cool if those who have been on Steemit a while could either write or make a video describing what Steemit is and where they think it's going in the future. Also a brief breakdown on the Steem Power, Steem Dollar stuff would be good. Actually, I'm open to anything you want to add.

I'd love if the founders ( Hive account@ned and Hive account@dantheman ?) could add their voice to this thread, then in the IE article, I can directly link this post to the article I will write. This will make it easy for people to come directly here and see this post. One of my recent articles went viral (meaning 11,000 shares and counting plus being viewed over 200,000 times.) Ironically, it was the story about the reddit user, FiletofFish1066, and that research led me to discovering the Steemit community. I actually haven't been able to leave Steemit since accidentally discovering it. It feels like a new home for me. Anyway, let's make the article good. More voices are better than just my one.

Here are the main questions I want to tackle in the article:

1. Do people actually get paid?
2. What is the exchange rate from Steem dollar to USD? I know I must get the Steem Dollar converted to Bitcoin then into dollars, but what value does 1 Steem Dollar have? Is it 1 Steem Dollar = $1? Somewhere I read that 1 Steem Dollar = $0.36
3. Where do you see Steem in the future?
4. Do you think it has the potential to replace Facebook?
5. What is the primary motivating factor of the founders? I noticed that Ned Scott has a background in finance. Does that mean that this site is receiving Venture Capital funding currently? Is it still receiving funding? How is the initial July 4 payout being financed? Is it through the angel investment or is it the cryptocurrency valuation? (please forgive me, I'm still educating myself on these things. I learned about Bitcoin in 2013 but I still have more research to do on this Steem Dollar).

Those are just a few questions that I have not been able to find answers to so far in my research. If you want to add your voice, jump in. I'll probably be working on this article for about a week. Do you think I should release the article after July 4th, when the payout is given? I was thinking that might be a smart move, to get more people on board here at Steemit.

ps- I think it would be really fun if members made their own YouTube videos, and I could then use some of them in the article. Maybe, even taking the crowdsourcing concept further, when I finish the article, I could post it here, and see what you all think before it's published.......these are some of my ideas so far....add your voice!